EDITIONS

Follow us

Establishment Republicans are recoiling at a draft proposal before the Republican National Committee that would bar party financial support for candidates who fail to meet eight of 10 issue tests. | REUTERS

The resolution, the latest skirmish in the GOP’s ongoing internal ideological battle, would require candidates to meet a purity test on fiscal and social issues or risk being denied direct and coordinated spending from the national committee.

Story Continued Below

But numerous top party officials say that imposing such a conservative litmus test would only spur intra-party bickering at a time when Republicans are poised to make significant gains in next year’s mid-term elections.

“We’re becoming a church that would rather chase away heretics than welcome converts and that’s no way to become a majority party,” complained former Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican who served as National Republican Congressional Committee chairman. “This makes no sense for those of us who are interested in winning elections.”

Ticking off each of the 10 policy questions, Davis noted how many House Republicans would fail the various tests.

“It’s death by a thousand cuts,” he concluded.

While Davis hails from the moderate wing of the party, more conservative Republicans are also voicing unease over the proposal, designated “the Resolution on Reagan's Unity Principle for Support of Candidates”—a reference to the former president’s axiom that the person who was with him 80 percent of the time was his ally.

Asked if the resolution was a good idea, Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, the number two Senate Republican, said flatly: “No.”

“In the United States, we only have two major political parties,” Kyl continued. “In a lot of countries they have a lot of different parties so virtually every one in the party can agree with everybody else on everything. But when you get it down to 300 million people divided by two, you have a lot of range of attitudes and views. And I think it’s best for both the Democrat Party and the Republican Party to be big tents to accommodate a lot of different viewpoints.”

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a former NRCC Chair and party operative, said he was in concert with each of the 10 issues.

“But I really think it’s a solution looking for a problem,” Cole observed. The better approach, he said: “You need to trust local Republicans.”

"I prefer to let the grassroots decide these sort of things," he said, calling his view the "10th Amendment approach."

Rep. Peter King and former Rep. Tom Reynolds, both New York Republicans, noted that they’d also pass the test, proposed by Indiana national party committeeman James Bopp.Yet each said it could harm the GOP’s effort to retake the majority in Congress.

“I don’t think national committeemen putting purity tests on the party is wise,” said Reynolds, also a former NRCC chair. He called the move a recipe for “a perfect minority.”

When Republicans claimed the majority in 1994—and when Democrats took it back in 2006—they did so thanks to some members who diverged from party orthodoxy, Reynolds noted.

“You need to recruit the candidates that reflect the districts where there is an opportunity to win,” he argued. “So the candidate in the 1st District of Mississippi is going to look different than the one in the 23rd District of New York.”

“I think it’s dangerous to judge a candidacy just based on a questionnaire,” added King. “You have to look at the person.”

Citing the upstate New York special election last month where the moderate-liberal GOP nominee, faced with a surging Conservative Party challenger, dropped out of the race and endorsed the Democrat who ultimately won, King added: “I think it was a mistake to have [Dede] Scozzafava as a candidate – but I don’t think we should overreact to one candidacy.”